XDG Base Directory Support

Overview¶

If you are a fellow Linux user you may be familiar with the XDG Base Directory Specification (BDS) as part of the freedesktop.org project. If not, you can find the short specification here, the ArchWiki has also additional information and list tools that support the specification. Also, wikipedia has a brief section on the topic.

Tip

In this documentation you will note paths and file locations which relate to the "genuine Skyscraper" approach. With the table below you can map these locations to their counterpart in XDG BDS.

File Locations: Genuine- and XDG-Skyscraper¶

Type	Genuine Skyscraper Loation	XDG BDS Location
CONFIG	All files, but no subfolders of `~/.skyscraper/*`	`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/skyscraper/`
CACHE	All of `~/.skyscraper/cache/`	`$XDG_CACHE_HOME/skyscraper/`
IMPORT	All of `~/.skyscraper/import/`	`$XDG_DATA_HOME/skyscraper/import/`
RESOURCE	All of `~/.skyscraper/resources/`	`$XDG_DATA_HOME/skyscraper/resources/`
LOG	Skipped files/games during processing `~/.skyscraper/skipped*.txt`	`$XDG_STATE_HOME/skyscraper/`
REPORT	Cache reports `~/.skyscraper/reports/*`	`$XDG_STATE_HOME/skyscraper/reports/`
LOG	Rare Screenscraper Error Log `~/.skyscraper/screenscraper_error.json`	`$XDG_STATE_HOME/skyscraper/`

As the per specifications: All paths must be absolute, relative paths will be ignored by Skyscraper. Non-existing paths will be created by Skyscraper.

How to Enable XDG¶

The XDG feature can be used with any modern Linux distribution, but should not be enabled on RetroPie-Installments as they rely on the genuine Skyscraper folder structure.

Review the Skyscraper project file (skyscraper.pro). Enable the line DEFINES+=XDG, rebuild and install Skyscraper. Then transfer the files from the genuine Skyscraper location to their XDG counterpart. If you start from scratch Skyscraper will be deploy its configuration files to the XDG destinations (by default sourced from /usr/local/etc/skyscraper).

If you want to verify if Skyscraper is compiled with XDG support run Skyscraper --version. If you see a XDG label below the version it means XDG is enabled and supported.

To disable XDG support undo the steps above.

The Fine Print

Skyscraper supports all user directories of the XDG BDS (except $HOME/.local/bin for user binaries). The system directories properties (XDG_DATA_DIRS and XDG_CONFIG_DIRS) are not utilized by Skyscraper.